June 19, 2026.
I will never forget this day.
Because today is the last day of my junior year. Once today’s classes are over, summer vacation officially begins!
Also because today is the Dragon Boat Festival. I received holiday greetings from a lot of friends, and I even got to eat the salted-egg-yolk pork rice dumpling my roommate bought!
Most importantly, because today… is the day I die.
Today, I died.
—Xu Moyang
*
The School of Creative Arts scheduled its design classes in the evening.
Tonight was the final class. There was no exam for the course, the professor did not take attendance, and all they had to do was submit a final paper at the end of the term.
The class was only halfway through when some students had already pulled out their phones and begun secretly booking tickets home for the holiday.
Xu Moyang did not need a ticket. He was a local and could go home with nothing but a bag. Compared with going home, he cared far more about his summer travel plans. The four roommates in his dorm had agreed to travel together over the break, and they were currently discussing their itinerary in the group chat.
After talking for quite a while, they decided to visit everyone’s hometown. Xu Moyang was from Shanghai, so there was no need to tour Shanghai. Of the other two, one was from Chongqing and one from Hangzhou, both of which were worth visiting.
[Bun: Oh, right. Where’s Brother Lu’s hometown? We should visit Brother Lu’s hometown too!]
[Keyboard: Isn’t Brother Lu from Shanghai?]
[Bun: No. I heard him say last time that he wouldn’t be in Shanghai over the summer.]
—Brother Lu’s full name was Lu Jin, and he was also Xu Moyang’s roommate.
Xu Moyang scratched his head, a little puzzled. He remembered Lu Jin being from Shanghai. The two of them had even attended the same high school.
He turned to look at the young man sitting beside him. The young man was strikingly handsome and lounged lazily against the back of his chair. Even dressed in an ordinary T-shirt and jeans that could be seen anywhere on the street, he was still recognizable at a glance in any crowd.
His eyelids drooped, and his long lashes cast a faint shadow beneath his eyes. One hand propped up his chin carelessly while the other deftly spun a black fountain pen.
The bell rang. The professor took a sip of goji-berry tea and announced a ten-minute break.
Bun and Keyboard immediately bounded over like horses let loose from their reins.
Bun patted Lu Jin’s arm. “Brother Lu, where’s your hometown? Let’s go there during summer vacation!”
“My hometown?” Lu Jin raised a brow. “You wouldn’t want to go to that godforsaken place.”
“It doesn’t matter if it isn’t a tourist city!” Bun said. “We can look around the nearby areas!”
Lu Jin’s spinning pen stopped.
“Better not.”
The area around his home? That was even worse.
The kind of place you could enter alive and never leave alive.
Bun and Keyboard exchanged glances, and the atmosphere became awkward for a moment. Xu Moyang reacted quickly and smoothed things over. “There are plenty of fun places. It’s fine if we don’t go there, right?”
Everyone took the opportunity to change the subject and began chattering about other cities.
But Xu Moyang could roughly guess why Lu Jin did not want his classmates visiting his hometown. They had known each other since high school. Lu Jin had never said it outright, but Xu Moyang knew his family circumstances were not very good.
Xu Moyang still remembered the year he first met Lu Jin. It had been an exceptionally cold winter, near the end of the first semester of their first year of high school, when Lu Jin transferred into their school.
Shanghai had just had snow. Icicles clung to haystacks, and the winter wind cut across their faces like knives, stinging painfully.
Yet in weather cold enough to pierce the bones, Lu Jin wore only a thin black hoodie when he followed his white-haired grandmother into the academic affairs office to register.
Xu Moyang happened to be there that day to pick up test papers for a classmate. As he passed by, he heard Lu Jin’s grandmother speaking accented Mandarin. “There ain’t a school in our village. The boy might have trouble keeping up. Please look after him a little, Teacher…”
Afterward, the homeroom teacher asked Xu Moyang, who was the class monitor, to show Lu Jin around the school.
It was all routine and everything went normally—until they went to add money to Lu Jin’s meal card in the cafeteria, and Lu Jin pulled a thick stack of red-and-green spirit money from his old cloth bag.
Everyone present was stunned. The young woman behind the top-up counter looked completely terrified.
The person at the center of it all calmly put the spirit money back into his pocket and said without expression, “I brought the wrong money. You people don’t use this.”
Everyone else: “?”
What did he mean by “you people don’t use this”?
No normal living person used spirit money!
When Lu Jin noticed that everyone was still staring at him with suspicious, uncertain expressions, he added, “…My grandmother packed the wrong money.”
Only then did everyone’s gazes gradually soften, soon turning into sympathy.
They sympathized with the new student from a poor family and with his grandmother, who apparently was not quite right in the head.
*
That had been six years ago.
The Lu Jin of today was worlds apart from the skinny rural child in the thin hoodie.
He had shot up over the past few years. Once small and scrawny, he was now 185 centimeters tall, broad-shouldered and long-legged, with smooth, defined muscle lines. Even the most ordinary T-shirt hung on him like it had been made for a model.
But Lu Jin still did not want his classmates visiting his home.
Maybe he was still insecure deep down!
Xu Moyang did not push him, and Bun and Keyboard tactfully let the matter drop.
At nine that night, class ended on time. After copying down the final points from the lecture, the students packed up in twos and threes and left the classroom.
Keyboard quickly put away his books and leaned toward Lu Jin and Xu Moyang. “Brothers! My train leaves tomorrow. Barbecue tonight? We can celebrate the start of vacation early!”
Xu Moyang and Bun raised both hands in agreement.
Lu Jin had no objections either, though he said he had something to take care of and might arrive a little late.
Xu Moyang grinned. “No problem. I have to go to University Road to pick up Yaoyao anyway! We’ll split up and meet later.”
The four reached an immediate agreement, and dinner was settled.
Bun and Keyboard returned to the dorm first. Xu Moyang booked a ride-hailing car to pick up his girlfriend on University Road.
Lu Jin slung his bag over one shoulder, shoved both hands into his pockets, and slowly walked out of the teaching building.
He moved so slowly that by the time he finally emerged, only a few students remained nearby. The streetlights stretched his shadow long across the pavement.
Lu Jin took out his phone. The screen lit up, and a notification appeared on an app with no icon:
[Temporary Assignment:
A malicious ghost is causing trouble in Shanghai, impersonating a ride-hailing driver and murdering passengers. A Reaper is required to deal with it as soon as possible.
Ghost Name: Huang Youquan
Ghost Rank: C
Crime: Escaped into the human world and caused fatal injuries.
Accept assignment?]
Lu Jin swiped a finger across the screen and tapped [Yes].
*
Xu Moyang felt absurdly lucky. He had selected the cheapest ride-hailing option, yet a driver accepted his order in barely a second.
By the time he left the school gate, a champagne-colored BYD was already parked quietly at the curb. Xu Moyang hopped in and fastened his seat belt.
“Driver, could you go a little faster? I’m in a hurry!”
“Sure thing.”
The driver answered, gripped the steering wheel, and slowly pressed the accelerator. It was already late, and traffic on the road was sparse. The car gradually sped up, scenery flashing past outside the windows.
“Going to pick up your girlfriend?” the driver asked.
“Yeah!” At the mention of Yaoyao, a smile unconsciously spread across Xu Moyang’s face. “She works as a server at a bar on University Road. It’s too late for her to go back alone, so I’m picking her up and taking her back to school.”
“A bar…”
The driver drew out the words, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel every so often. “That kind of place is filthy. What decent girl goes to a bar?”
Xu Moyang frowned, already uncomfortable. “Driver, what exactly are you trying to say?”
“Nothing. Just making conversation.” The driver gave two dry laughs. “I’m only reminding you to keep your eyes open. A girl spending her nights in a place like that sees and hears far more than you think… Her mind naturally gets a little more… adventurous too…”
“My girlfriend is only working there as a server!” Xu Moyang snapped. “Show some respect when you talk about her!”
“Respect? Of course I respect women!”
The driver’s sinister laugh sounded particularly frightening in the quiet car. “I respected my wife too… gave her money to spend, gave her a house to live in. And what did she do?”
His voice suddenly rose into hysteria. “She used my money to buy perfume! Dresses! To go please that bastard she was sleeping with! Every time I came home, the whole place reeked of that disgusting perfume!”
“Does your girlfriend smell like that too?” The driver slowly turned his head. His neck made a series of cracking sounds. “Smell it… smell carefully… Doesn’t she smell just like my wife… like a filthy whore?”
Every hair on Xu Moyang’s body stood on end. “What the hell is wrong with you? Stop the car! I’m getting out!”
He lunged toward the door, but his palm landed on a slick, wet handle. At some point, thick red liquid had begun seeping from all four walls of the car, horrifyingly vivid. Worse, a pair of deathly pale hands stretched from the shadows beneath his feet and suddenly clamped around Xu Moyang’s ankle!
Xu Moyang: “!!!”
“Stop the car? Dream on!”
The driver’s head twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees to face Xu Moyang. His neck was twisted like a rope, blood seeped from his eye sockets, and terrifying fangs sprouted from his mouth.
“You smell like that bitch too! You’re the adulterer! You’re all the same! Lying to me! All of you are lying to me! Better dead! Better if all of us die together!”
The driver slammed down the accelerator. The car surged forward wildly and hurtled out of control toward the guardrail of the elevated highway!
Xu Moyang panicked and lunged forward to grab the steering wheel, but the hands in the shadows suddenly stretched longer and seized his throat. Suffocation crushed down on him, and his vision gradually blurred…
“BOOM—!”
Just as the BYD was about to smash into the guardrail, a deafening crash sounded. It was as if a boulder had dropped from the sky and slammed heavily onto the hood!
A shallow crater appeared in the elevated roadway, and the speeding car stopped dead in an instant.
The man on the hood slowly stood. Through the windshield, Xu Moyang could not see his face, only the sharply pressed black suit trousers covering his legs.
The man kept one hand in his trouser pocket and held a pitch-black long saber in the other. With one clean motion, he jumped down from the hood.
The driver’s limbs stretched at grotesque angles. Hunched over on all fours like a giant spider, he suddenly lunged at the man in the suit!
Xu Moyang: “Watch out!”
The suited man moved even faster. He shifted sideways and drove the sheathed long saber downward, smashing the driver’s head brutally into the concrete!
Xu Moyang: “!!!”
Newton would have clawed his way out of his coffin at the sight.
Xu Moyang struggled out of the ride-hailing car, staggering as he raised his head to look at the man in the suit.
Backlit by the streetlights, the man’s silhouette looked strangely familiar.
“Bro… Brother Lu?”
Lu Jin did not hear Xu Moyang. He took out his phone and compared the driver with the assignment information on the screen.
“Huang Youquan? C-rank malicious ghost. Escaped the Netherworld and killed three people. I’m taking you back to the Underworld now.”
After speaking, Lu Jin raised his phone and took a picture of the driver. The thing instantly dissolved into a wisp of black smoke and was sucked into the phone.
Only after everything was handled did Lu Jin turn toward the utterly stunned Xu Moyang.
Their eyes met—
Lu Jin: “…”
Xu Moyang: “…”
Xu Moyang’s mind had turned to mush. A stomachful of questions jammed in his throat, and he had no idea which one to ask first.
At that moment, startled cries came from the school gate not far away. Police sirens, ambulance sirens, and the voices of bystanders all tangled together.
“Something happened at school too?” Xu Moyang muttered. “What a disaster of a night!”
Then Xu Moyang saw paramedics rush toward an unconscious university student. A defibrillator crackled as it shocked the student’s chest.
Xu Moyang suddenly felt an electric current shoot through his own body. The jolt left every inch of him numb and his mind blank.
He jerked his head up and stared at the figure surrounded by paramedics—
The person lying on the ground being resuscitated was him.
Author’s Note:
★ Please bookmark my upcoming novel, Back to When My Foster Father Was Young
Size Difference | Delicate, Pampered Beauty × Cold, Ruthless Foster Father
Pei Mian is the adopted son of the Pei family.
His foster father, Pei Wangyan, treats him with extreme coldness, and the two rarely speak.
Materially, however, Pei Wangyan is astonishingly generous. Pei Mian wears the latest custom designer collections, eats meals prepared by private chefs, and even bathes in a mixture of Bordeaux from a particular vintage and first-milking colostrum.
Pei Mian is exquisitely pampered for eight years.
He assumes this life will continue, but on the day he turns eighteen, Pei Mian unexpectedly travels ten years into the past.
Because his physical body travels with him, he arrives penniless and ends up on the streets, his delicate skin rubbed red and raw by coarse clothing.
With nowhere else to go, Pei Mian has no choice but to find Pei Wangyan.
“Daddy, I’m here!”
“You’re going to raise me sooner or later anyway. There’s no problem starting early, right?”
After selling the last watch he owns, Pei Mian travels thousands of miles to River City and finally finds Pei Wangyan.
But the business tycoon who once dominated the corporate world is currently nothing more than a violent, rebellious teenager.
The first time he sees Pei Mian—
“Raise a kid? I don’t raise kids.”
“A wife, maybe.”
“Stay with me. One million a month. How does that sound?”
Pei Mian: “…?”
*
Good news: His foster father is just as rich as ever.
Bad news: The adopted son is about to become a kept man.
Unable to get past the mental hurdle, Pei Mian runs away in the middle of the night.
But life outside is too hard. He cannot eat enough, cannot stay warm, cannot sleep well… After only a few days, Pei Mian finally reaches his limit and slinks back in defeat.
They lived together for eight years, after all.
Eating XX is still better than eating bitterness, right?
*
In his previous life, whenever Pei Wangyan forced Pei Mian to study, all Pei Mian had to do was let his eyes redden and the man would give in, indulging him until he became nothing more than a beautiful useless ornament.
But this time—
Pei Wangyan presses him against the floor-to-ceiling window, his broad shoulders blocking out every ray of light.
No matter how Pei Mian cries, begs, or struggles, the man remains unmoved. Instead, he holds him even tighter and forces him to swallow everything.
“Baby,”
his low, hoarse voice slips into Pei Mian’s ear wrapped in hot breath,
“you’re eating so greedily, so why are you crying?”
